Charlie The Kitten Who Saved A Life

CHAPTER EIGHT

Hello everyone, I’m glad to see you’ve all come back again today to hear some more of my story. It was a good idea of yours, Oliver, to have a break so that we could all go home for our dinners and get some sleep. I hope none of you had nightmares about my experiences with the sea. It actually doesn’t hurt you, you know, as long as you don’t walk right up to it. As an experienced traveller now, I can reassure you all of that, but of course, at the time I’m telling you about, I didn’t know any more than you do. No, Tabitha, there’s no sea around here, I promise you. We’d have heard it by now if there was.

So let’s get back to my incredible story, shall we? I was just telling you how I fell asleep under the bench. Well, when I woke up, it was already bright sunshine so I must have slept soundly all night despite the scary situation. I felt bad that I hadn’t even managed to keep one eye open in case I was needed to protect the girls. I had a stretch and a quick wash, and padded cautiously along the walkway to the hut where the children had gone to sleep. To my horror, the door was open and neither of them were in there! I looked all around and in the distance I could see another small building, where a female human was carrying chairs and little tables and arranging them outside. And then, to my relief, I saw Caroline and Grace standing in front of the building, taking sandwiches and bottles of water from a young male serving them from the window. It must have been a shop of some kind. I was so hungry I would have liked to run up and grab myself a bite of one of those sandwiches, but I was pretty sure I should stay out of sight. So I slunk carefully along, keeping to the shadows, until I was close enough to hear them.

‘Thank you,’ Caroline was saying to the boy, giving him some money. ‘And we wondered if you could tell us how far it is to Duncombe?’

‘We’re on our way there, to stay with my aunt,’ Grace added.

‘Duncombe?’ the woman putting out the chairs said, turning round to look at them in surprise. ‘You’re a bit off the beaten track here, then, my lovely. You need to get back on the main road into Mudditon and it’s about five miles further on from there. Your parents waiting for you in the car, are they?’

‘No, we’re—’

‘Yes! Yes, they’re … um … waiting for us, up the road,’ Caroline interrupted Grace quickly.

‘Right. Well, that’s just as well, because if you were trying to get there without a car, you’d have a job. The morning bus has gone, and the next one isn’t till one o’clock. And that only takes you as far as Mudditon.’

‘Is it too far to walk to Duncombe?’ Grace asked, glancing at Caroline.

‘Oh, bless you, you’d take all day and night to walk there, and that’s a fact!’ the woman said, laughing. ‘Get yourselves off back to Mum and Dad now, if they’re waiting for you up the top.’

‘Oh, it’s all right, they’re just … um … having their breakfast,’ Caroline said.

‘Yes,’ Grace joined in. ‘They said we could come down here and eat ours on the beach.’

The woman stared after them, shaking her head, as they walked away.

‘I don’t think she suspected anything,’ Grace whispered as they passed by without noticing me shrinking back into a gap in the wall.

‘Let’s sit on the beach to have these, then, while we decide what to do,’ Caroline suggested. ‘It looks like we’ll have to wait for the next bus, Grace.’

‘Yes, and then it’ll just take us back where we started. I’m sorry, Caro. I have brought us in the wrong direction, haven’t I?’

‘Well, it’s not your fault. We’ll just have to start again from Mudditon.’

And they proceeded to climb down some steps, taking them even closer to the sea. I must say, the sea didn’t look so scary now. It had turned from black to a nice blue colour, with shiny white bits in it, and was swishing backwards and forwards a lot more gently. Instead of roaring and thumping it was just making gentle whooshing noises. I still didn’t fancy getting any closer, but it wasn’t making my heart race with fear now. I sat down in the shadow of the huts and watched my two bad little human kittens sitting themselves down on the part they called the beach. Caroline got a jumper out of her rucksack and laid it on the ground, and they spread their sandwiches out on it and started eating. My mouth was watering and my tummy rumbled so loudly I thought they’d hear it. I’d have to hunt soon, or find someone to feed me, or I’d never have the strength to get back home!

At this thought, I mewed sadly to myself with the sudden realisation that I didn’t even know when I was ever going to get home, if the holiday cottage was even my home now. The girls were talking about getting on a bus! What about me? Could I get on it with them? I knew what a bus was, of course – one comes to Little Broomford a few times every day, as you know. (It’s a very large green car, Timmy Kitten, if you’ve never seen it. It snorts and grunts when it stops outside the village shop, and lots of humans climb onto it with shopping bags.) And of course, the human kittens all get on another bus every day to go to school, don’t they. But I’d never heard of a cat getting on a bus, and anyway I didn’t want the girls to see me following them. What was I going to do? I doubted I could run fast enough to keep up with the bus. I’d just have to try to find my way back to Mudditon on my own. The girls would carry on trying to get to the place where the Great Aunt lived, risking their lives again with predators and all sorts of unknown dangers, and my mission to save them would have failed miserably. I was despondent now, as you can imagine, as well as feeling hungry and lost.

I wasn’t allowed to dwell on this for long, though, because suddenly there was a loud squawking and screeching in the air above me, and out of nowhere, two huge seagulls came flapping down, skimming the roofs of the huts behind me, circling round each other for a minute over the beach and then suddenly swooping down on the two girls, trying to grab their food.

‘Leave them alone!’ I meowed out loud without stopping to think, but of course, nobody could hear me because of the squawking of the gulls and now, the screams of the girls as they waved their paws around, trying to defend themselves.

‘Go away!’ Grace was yelling, flapping her paw at one of them. Bits of sandwich fell onto the beach and the gull started grabbing at them with his big hooked beak.

‘Ouch! Get off!’ Caroline was shouting at the other bird. She dropped the sandwich she’d been holding and jumped up, crying and clutching one paw in the other. ‘It bit my finger, Grace! Ouch! Go away!’ Still holding her sore paw, she started to run away from the gulls, but she was too busy looking back at them and crying, to see where she was going.

‘Watch out for the rocks, Caro!’ screamed Grace.

Too late. I watched in horror as Caroline’s paw caught on a rock and she went crashing down onto the ground. Her head hit another rock and she made a noise that sounded like ‘Oomph’ before lying very still, with Grace running towards her, screaming her name.

I suppose you all think, if I’m such a brave young cat, why was I still standing up there on the pathway by the beach huts instead of galloping down the beach to help? But look, sometimes things are so bad that even the cleverest cat in the world wouldn’t know what to do, right? I admit it, I just stood up there and stared, my heart pounding, my muscles taut and tense, my tail twitching, quivering with fear and indecision. What could I do? I wasn’t big enough to pick her up, was I? Even dogs wouldn’t be much better in a situation like this, I’ll have you know. They might go and lie down next to the wounded human and lick her face with their slobbery wet tongues, but at the end of the day, what’s the point of that? My instinct, to be honest, was to run for my life, but I think it says something for me, at least, that I didn’t. I was so scared for Caroline, I had to wait to see if she was all right. The seagulls had no such finer feelings, I can tell you. There they were, squabbling over the last few crusts of the girls’ sandwiches, not caring in the least about the trouble they’d caused, and within a few minutes they’d flapped their massive wings and taken off into the sky again.

‘Yes, clear off, you bullies, you!’ I meowed at them from the safety of the ground. I didn’t think they’d ever been known to eat cats.

When I looked back at Caroline again, I saw to my relief that she’d now woken up and lifted her head. She let out a moan, and Grace cried out:

‘Oh, no! Your head! You’re bleeding!’

‘Ow, ow, ow!’ Caroline was crying, holding her paw up to her head. ‘No, it’s my finger that’s bleeding. That horrible seagull bit me, Grace!’

‘And you hit your head, look – you’ve cut it open. Oh, Caro, we need to go to a hospital. I’d better go and get help.’

‘No!’ Caroline mewed. ‘We’ll get into terrible trouble, Grace. And I’m not going to hospital. I hate hospitals!’

‘But you’re hurt!’

‘I’ll be all right. Just give me a minute. I’ll … I’ll wrap something round my finger, and maybe you can help me clean up my head … we can use the sink in that toilet block behind the café.’

She tried to stand up, but she must have been feeling dizzy, like you do if you’ve chased your tail for ages, because she quickly sat back down again and held her head. There was red blood dripping down the back of her neck onto her T-shirt and even though Grace tried to wrap a tissue round her finger, blood was still coming through that too.

This was no good. I knew I had to do something now, or I’d definitely have to consider myself a champion scaredy-cat for the rest of my nine lives. And there was only one option. I belted back along the pathway to the little café where they’d bought the sandwiches. The woman was inside now – I could hear her talking to the boy, and laughing.

‘Quick!’ I meowed at them in Cat from the doorway. ‘I need your help! It’s an emergency!’

‘Oh look,’ said the boy. ‘A nice little tabby cat. I haven’t seen him around here before. He doesn’t look like one of the ferals.’

‘No, he’s not. He looks well cared for. Are you lost, puss? He’s only a kitten, Robbie.’

She came over and bent down to stroke me. I wanted to tell her I was getting a bit big to be called a kitten, and that my name wasn’t Puss, but there really wasn’t time for any pleasantries.

‘Outside!’ I meowed. ‘On the beach! Quick!’ I walked back out of the door, turned round and meowed at them again urgently. ‘Come on!’

‘What’s up with him?’ the boy said, without moving.

But the woman, frowning and muttering to herself, wiped her hands on a towel and followed me out of the door.

‘What is it, puss?’ she said. ‘Hungry, I suppose, are you, or …’ She stopped, staring down at the beach. ‘What’s going on down there?’ And then she called back through the door to the boy: ‘Robbie, call an ambulance. There’s been an accident on the beach. A little girl, tell them. Nine-nine-nine, you fool, and hurry up about it!’

Then she ran, as fast as a plump little human female can, down the steps and across the beach, calling out to the girls as I watched her approaching them.

‘Don’t try to get up, dearie. There’s an ambulance on its way.’

‘Oh no,’ Caroline said. ‘Please, we don’t need an ambulance. I’m fine. Honestly, we’ll just get going.’

‘Caro,’ Grace said. ‘I actually think you should get your head looked at. It looks quite bad.’

‘Yes, my lovely, that’s a nasty cut on your head, it probably needs stitches – and look at your poor finger too! How did that happen?’

‘A seagull bit her,’ Grace said.

‘Oh, they’re a dratted nuisance, those damn birds,’ the woman said. ‘Now then, why don’t you go and fetch your mummy and daddy from the car,’ she added to Grace. ‘Tell them the ambulance is coming, and I’ll stay here with your friend until they get here.’

Even from where I was watching, I could see the look Grace exchanged with Caroline.

‘Don’t say anything,’ Caroline warned her.

‘We have to,’ Grace said. ‘It doesn’t matter anymore, Caro. It’s all gone wrong, and we shouldn’t have done it in the first place. We’re going to have to go back. After you’ve been to hospital.’

‘Back where, my lovely?’ the woman asked, looking from one of them to the other.

Grace looked down at the ground. ‘We told you a lie,’ she said, so quietly that I had to prick up my ears to hear her. ‘Our parents aren’t with us. We were trying to run away.’

‘But only to Grace’s great aunt’s house,’ Caroline said, as if that made it all right. ‘We were going to stay with her.’

‘That’s why you wanted to go to Duncombe. I did think it strange. And your parents didn’t know.’

The girls both shook their heads.

‘Are we going to get into really big trouble?’ Caroline mumbled.

‘Not from me, dearie. It’s not for me to say. But your poor parents will be beside themselves, you know. You’ll have worried the life out of them. Let me give them a call, for you, shall I? Let them know you’re all right?’

‘My parents probably don’t even know we’ve gone,’ Grace said, starting to cry now. ‘I’m supposed to be staying with you in Mudditon, aren’t I?’

‘Laura might have told them. And she’ll definitely have told my dad, and he’ll have totally freaked out. He’s probably had to come back down from London. I’ll be grounded for the rest of the holidays!’ Caroline said, joining in with the mewing.

‘Well, look, let’s not all get ourselves in a state about it,’ soothed the plump female. ‘First things first, you need that head injury checked, dearie, and here come the paramedics now, so let’s get you sorted out and we’ll worry about everything else afterwards.’

Two males wearing identical clothing were running down the beach now, carrying bags and looking very serious. They got down on the rocks next to Caroline and started looking at her head and her finger, and talking to her, and to Grace, asking them questions I couldn’t hear properly. They took quite a long time. They put white bandages round both her hurt places and, finally, took one of her arms each to sit her up.

‘She needs the stretcher,’ I heard one of them say as Caroline swayed slightly and put her paws up to her head again. ‘All right, sweetheart, we’re going to lift you now. One, two, three …’ She was laid onto a thing like a sheet that they’d put on the beach. ‘Still feeling dizzy?’

‘No, I’m all right while I’m lying down,’ Caroline said. ‘I really don’t think I need to go to hospital. I don’t like hospitals.’

‘It’ll be fine, love, they’ll take good care of you, you’ll see. Anyway we’ve already told them we’re on our way, so it’s out of our hands. And now we’ve got your names and your holiday address, we’ll be calling your details over to the hospital so they can get your parents there.’

‘But we don’t want—’ she started.

‘Has to be done, sweetheart,’ he said firmly. ‘No choice in the matter. You’ll be glad to see them when they get there, you know. Everyone has arguments, pet, but at the end of the day, they’re still your parents, see?’

‘I know,’ Grace said in a little voice as she followed them up the beach. ‘We shouldn’t have done it, Caro. We’ll just have to take the telling-off.’

I shrunk myself back into the shadows again as they all came back up the steps. I was glad they were going to the hospital. Glad they were going to be taken home, too. But as for me, I had no idea what I was going to do. I followed behind them, at a distance again, up the slope to the road where this big yellow car they called an ambulance was waiting. The female from the café called out goodbye to them.

‘You’ll be all right now, dearie!’ she said.

And then, as Caroline was carried inside the ambulance, with Grace climbing in next to her, the woman said:

‘Oh, there’s that little tabby cat again! I could swear he was trying to let me know there was an accident on the beach.’

I ran back quickly to the nearest bushes, trying to hide. I’d have liked to get into the ambulance and go with Caroline and Grace, to be honest, but I knew I wouldn’t be allowed.

‘It looked a bit like Charlie,’ I heard Caroline say.

I couldn’t help a pitiful little mew escaping from my lips. I felt so lost and lonely now the girls were being taken away. I don’t suppose they heard me, from inside the ambulance. But as the men started to close the doors of the ambulance, I saw Caroline’s face staring back out at me. I couldn’t have been as well hidden as I thought I was. And at the very last moment, just as the doors closed, I thought I saw her eyes growing wide with surprise and her mouth making the word ‘Charlie!’

And then they were gone. And I was all alone.